Monday, July 4, 2016

Jobs Was A Poser (Silicon Valley HBO)

This has been one of the shows that I was hype for, from the opening lines in the trailer. "Jobs was a poser. He didn't even write code." I was hooked. Cause it was true. So true and this show came at the right time. For me at-least. This is around the time I was deeply watching 'The Social Network". I think I have seen the show around ten times. I watched "Jobs" once. That movie wasn't that good. They didn't touch the good stuff. Not good as in good but good as in entertaining for a movie. I mean, he denied his child and had the mother on welfare while he was a billionaire. How did that not make the movie. Also his beef with Bill Gates. That should have been more than one phone call in the movie. Since the movie was 2 hours long. They made him too nice in the movie. He was a downright asshole. People love assholes. Why else do they keep dating them? (Sorry had Facebook open and it's like 5 women complaining about their 'man')This has nothing to do with anything. Let me stop.

So, yeah. I have been enjoining this show since it's birth.

Silicon Valley is about Richard Hendricks, a shy, reclusive programmer who works at a large internet company called Hooli. He is also developing a music app called Pied Piper in a live-in startup business incubator run by entrepreneur Erlich Bachman . After a rocky post-TED elevator pitch of Pied Piper to venture capitalist Peter Gregory , Hendricks also shows his work to a pair of programmers at Hooli who mock him. Within hours, however, Hooli executive Donald "Jared" Dunn and Gregory's assistant Monica (Amanda Crew) discover that the app contains a revolutionary data compression algorithm.

Hooli CEO Gavin Belson proposes a US$4 million buy-out of Pied Piper, while Peter Gregory offers a $200,000 investment for 5% ownership in the company, an offer that would result in an equivalent valuation for the company. This leads Belson to increase his offer to $10 million. With encouragement from Monica and the support of Bachman, Hendricks chooses Gregory's offer. He hires the residents of the incubator, except for his friend Nelson "Big Head" Bighetti, to become the Pied Piper team, along with Dunn, who defects from Hooli.

That's what happens in the first episode, just the first. It's also some other funny things that happens along the way so don't feel that I spoil anything for you. Cause none of that is anything compared to what have happened since the first episode. The show gets better with each passing season. Which is hard to say for most. Currently on the third season.I want to talk about a couple of my favorite things from the show. Spoiler Alert Favorite things:

First off, Pied Piper has a fully working website.

Now, I have only seen this done a couple times. One being the other HBO show 'True Blood' with Jessica (Website still working). She used to do blog post about the events that were going on in Bon Temps and her personal life as a vampire. This might be where the idea for having the fully working website came about. On the Pied Piper site, they keep it updated. Weekly. Take when Ricard was no longer the CEO of the company for that period of time. He was taken off the website "Who We Are" section and replaced with Action Jack. As we know, Action Jack got the axe and Richard was given back his CEO position, so on the website he was placed back in the position. They also added the three programs that Jared added to the team. I didn't check to see at the time but I'm sure they had the sales team and everybody else that worked out of that oversized kids zone.

Simple details things like that is what makes the show great. They also have bio's for each person if you click the names. Detailed bio's.

CODE RAG

Another thing that is on the site that is passed into real life, is the Code Rag blog. Most shows and movies love to show some article really fast on the screen. Mostly consisting of random words. Not on Silicon Valley. You want to read what was wrote about Erlich Bachman and rather as they put it "The Dumbest Man in Tech" you can. Click the link. While you there, look around around. Read about the "Gavin Belson’s Hooli-Scrub Scandal". That got pretty ugly.

I don't want to hang up on every website that this show have made, so I guess I will just go ahead and say that Raviga also has a website. They have a pretty strong portfolio to stand on. Like Terra Buena. They turnthe sand of Third World deserts into arable farmland with genetically modified gut bacteria from freshwater mollusks.

Similar to how Entourage did it. Only less of the time, SV brings in the big hitters. Rather it's them tweeting about the missed chance at getting in on the ground floor of Hooli. This past week featured some people you might have heard of (Former Twitter CEO and current Yelp CEO).

Dropbox even gave the show a shoutout. The platform looks familiar. Hmmm.

Favorite moment:

The first logo that Pied Piper had was bad, the second wasn't better. It was run of the mill. The third. The third I'm feeling. I need to get a stick of it. Back to the first. The company name is based around the tale of Pied Piper of Hamelin. The rat magically rat catcher. SO the logo is a flat shadow version of him blowing the flute he use to bring the rats in. Problem is, well, click the video.

The Jerk Off AlgorithmYes, you read that right, they made came up a jerk off algorithm. It came after TechCrunch Disrupt first round (Also another real thing) where Erlich Bachman had previously fuck one of the judges wife and, well the judge took it out on his face. With the fear of being sued, TCD pushes the team to the next round. At this point the team is down, cause they are unsure about the working of the app at this point. So Erlich gives everybody a pep talk that turns into something from a beautiful mind. (Youtube won't let this video be embedded for some reason)

Favorite Characters:

Russ Hanneman became a billionaire two decades ago, when he put radio on the internet. He approached Richard to invest in Pied Piper and offers him plenty of unconventional business advice. Through years in the Valley, Russ has developed a reputation as a bro, which he maintains with flashy sports cars, calf implants and a gratuitous lifestyle.

It's safe to say that he is just one big bag full of nuts. When he first met Jared. He looks at everybody and goes "This guy fucks, am I right?". Now Jared who realname is Donald but everybody calls him 'Jared' cause it stuck, is the least likely out of any of them to be fucking. Jared seems too awkward to speak to women. He barley can speak to men. Fast forward to the next season and what do you know Russ was right. Jared really do be fucking. Or as Erlich put it "Jared, nice, using that dick".

Bertram Gilfoyle, a LaVeyan Satanist network engineer and Canadian illegal immigrant, until he successfully applies for a visa after Dinesh puts him under pressure. Gilfoyle credits himself as an online security expert, and as such is responsible for system administration and server configuration at Pied Piper. Gilfoyle often plays cruel pranks on Dinesh, but the two do appear to be friends despite this, with the two often bonding over their shared moral ambiguity. He acts as the systems architect of Pied Piper.

Gilfoyle is one big asshole and everybody loves it. He has to be the best on the show. He's forever stale face. You never know what's really going on in that mind of his. One time Dinesh accidentally sold off the wrong hard drive, the one he sold being his. So Jared tracks it down and Gilfoyle comes up with the plan to pretend to be Greek Squad and steal the hard drive, replacing it with another fresh one.

Dinesh and Gilfoyle arrive to the older man's house and Gilfoyle goes in. While in the house, he pull out a drill. He doesn't switch out the hard drive, he just drills through the middle of it and leaves.

Erlich Bachman, a supremely confident and arrogant entrepreneur who founded an innovation incubator in his home after the purchase of his airfare collator Aviato. Under the incubator agreement, Erlich owns 10% of Pied Piper, and is later appointed to the company's board of directors after Richard realizes how important Erlich is to the business. Erlich is a frequent user of marijuana. It is revealed in the season 2 finale that Erlich no longer codes because of severe carpal tunnel syndrome.

Favorite Episodes:

Season One . Episode 8 "Optimal Tip-to-Tip Efficiency"Desperate to avoid litigation after the brawl, TechCrunch offers Pied Piper a ticket straight through to the final Battlefield stage, but the team is despondent after watching the Nucleus presentation and learning that not only is Hooli's Weissman compression quality score 2.89, the exact same as theirs, but they also have a number of additional features which make Nucleus a much better application. The team retreats to their hotel room, where they mock up a mathematical model for Erlich to give handjobs to every male in the Battlefield audience instead of doing their presentation, which has Richard retreating to his room away from their conversation. He stays up all night, deletes most of the Pied Piper features and leaves only one - the all-important compression engine, which, using Richard's brand new compression code, achieves a Weissman compression quality score of 5.2. Pied Piper wins the Battlefield, embarrassing Belson and Hooli. After learning from Monica, amidst some flirting between the two, that Pied Piper will be fielding business interests and that things will only get harder, Richard has a panic attack and vomits into a dumpster in the alley.

Season Two. Episode 6 "Homicide"Hooli launches Nucleus by using it to broadcast a major mixed martial arts (UFC) event. The demo fails miserably. Pied Piper sees this as an opportunity to show off their technology by partnering with "Homicide" energy drink, owned by a former classmate of Erlich's, and broadcasting a publicity stunt. Dinesh and Gilfoyle notice that Blaine, the stunt driver, has miscalculated his ramp speed and will likely be killed attempting the stunt. Blaine arrogantly refuses to listen to their concerns. Gavin Belson, caught short by the Nucleus failure, worries that he has surrounded himself with sycophants who only tell him what he wants to hear. Gilfoyle and Dinesh debate the morality of letting Blaine kill himself performing the stunt. Later, Blaine comes in to apologize and sees the SWOT analysis they performed for it posted on the wall, becoming highly offended. Richard discovers that Homicide has omitted the Pied Piper logo from the broadcast and the partnership with Homicide falls apart, and Richard agrees to broadcast a live stream of a condor egg as a technology demo instead. At the end of the episode the Homicide stunt is broadcast along with End Frame's logo. The group remembers End Frame as the company that tricked them into revealing their algorithm in episode 2.

Season Two. Episode 8 "White Hat/Black Hat"Richard returns home and discovers Russ Hanneman waiting for him to celebrate Richard's victory over End Frame. Gavin Belson attends a board meeting where he tries to urge restraint on Nucleus publicity without admitting that Nucleus is in trouble. The meeting ends with Gavin realizing that he may need a scapegoat. In the next scene, he convinces Davis Bannercheck to return to Hooli to head up the Nucleus project. Richard learns that Seth Lee, the network security engineer for End Frame had been fired, presumably due to Gilfoyle's breaching of End Frame security in episode 7. Richard feels bad and reaches out to Seth. Richard tells Seth that the break-in had not been his fault. Seth becomes enraged and threatens to hack into Pied Piper and get revenge. Richard becomes very concerned about Seth's threats. Gilfoyle is unconcerned, assuring Richard that Pied Piper's security is solid. Dinesh stresses that Richard should not be admitting to anybody that Pied Piper had broken into End Frame, explaining that Richard is now a "black hat" and needs to be careful. Bannercheck interviews the Nucleus team to assess the state of the project. In the next scene, Gavin learns that Bannercheck has quit Hooli and left as fast as his car would take him. Gavin realizes that he has lost his scapegoat for the upcoming Nucleus fiasco. Richard's increasing paranoia about Seth annoys the Pied Piper team. Richard reaches out to Seth again and they mutually apologize. Richard tells Seth that Gilfoyle hadn't been worried at all and Seth feels insulted and issues fresh threats. Pied Piper begins transferring data from Intersite for the bake-off. Russ Hanneman arrives to celebrate and Richard becomes angry at the interruption and begins shouting at Hanneman. Suddenly Pied Piper receives a frantic phone call from the CTO of Intersite informing them that Pied Piper is deleting all of Intersite's data. In the ensuing panic, they conclude that Seth has made good on his threats and has hacked into their system although Gilfoyle can't figure out how. Eventually it is discovered that Hanneman had put a tequila bottle down on the "Delete" key of one of the laptops. The episode ends with Intersite angrily dismissing Pied Piper.